translate like sketchup move
Snap to active

While in Edit mode, change the snap to Vertices and select Active option. As stated by the Blender referece manual's page the snap target options:


  determine what part of the selection snaps to the target objects.


In particular the Active option:


  move the active element (vertex in Edit mode, object in Object mode) to the target.


Select the geometry to move and set the wanted vertex as active (should become white instead of orange).

Now you can use the active selection as pivot point to snap the selected geometry around.



Another method could be to move the origin of the object to a specific 3D cursor location and use it as your pivot point. In object mode, Active option is infact referring to the origin of the active (bright orange) object of the selection (dark orange)



Both methods above are quite fast, but they both have the disadvantage of messing up your initial object origin's location.

If you are interested in keeping the orign in it's relative coordinates from the geometry, I would suggest to use a third "dummy" object that would be your temporary pivot and delete it when the trasformation is over. You can use for example the Hook to new object command to quickly create an empty upon the selected geometry.